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MCE LoveFilm is available as either a free version which has access to basic LoveFilm controls, or a premium version which has access to all features.

Free

Premium

Browse Films By Genre

Yes

Yes

Search For Films By Name

Yes

Yes

View Rental List

Yes

Yes

View Current Films At Home

Yes

Yes

Add Films To Rental List

Yes

Yes

Watch Films Online

No

Yes

Watch Trailers

Yes

Yes

Remove Films From Rental List

No

Yes

Browse more than 25 films in a list

No

Yes

Local Favourites

Yes

Yes

Online Favourites

No

Yes

Cost

Free

£9.99

When you attempt to use a premium feature in the application, you will be prompted to upgrade within the application. You can purchase the upgrade quickly and easily through paypal, either by credit card or with a paypal account. Once you have completed the purchase, simply return to MCE LoveFilm and click the button to complete the upgrade. Your license key will automatically be installed.

How to buy a license

To buy an MCE LoveFilm license, you must purchase the license from within the application by either going to the Settings page, or attempting to use a premium feature. This will then take you to a paypal checkout to pay for your license, and automatically enable it on the PC you are using

How to upgrade to multiple computers

If you have already purchased a license and you want to enable it for use on multiple computers, send an e-mail to sales@milliesoft.co.uk for instructions.

No, sorry. Some of the interfaces required are only available in Windows 7, so a Vista version is not possible

2. Is there an XP version?

No, sorry. Some of the interfaces required are only available in Windows 7, so an XP version is not possible

3. Why is the wrong logo shown for my TV Channel?

I don't have global information about channels and logos for all TV channels globally, so I have to do some guesswork. I get notified when someone adds a channel with an unrecognized call sign, and I do my best to google the right logo for it. I'm bound to get it wrong sometimes since different countries have similarly named channels. If I have got the wrong channel logo, put a post on the forum with the name of the channel that you see on the screen and a link to the TV station web site.

Songler FAQ

1) Does Spotify work on extenders?

No. Spotify don't currently have any windows libraries, so I can't directly get their streams. Instead I open the Spotify PC application in the background to play the audio. This doesn't get picked up by the extender, which only plays audio that comes from within media center itself.

Spotify have told me that they are considering windows libraries, which would allow me to give a great user experience on the PC, but at the moment the Spotify apis (for linux) stream Ogg audio, which isn't a supported format on extenders, so unless that changes with the release of windows libraries, it still won't work on extenders.

2) Does last.fm work on extenders?

No, the audio fails to play on extenders. I suspect that extenders are doing something odd like requesting the track twice, which last.fm don't allow.

4) When I enter my last.fm username and password, I get an error saying that it failed to authenticate

There is currently an issue with last.fm where some accounts can be validated and some accounts can not. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to the accounts. See here for the latest from last.fm on it. If you are not currently a last.fm premium subscriber and want to play content through Songler, my advice is to sign up with last.fm for a free account, and then enter your username and password in Songler. If you get the confirmation message saying that your login has been validated but you can't yet play music, then your account is fine, and you can go ahead and upgrade to a premium last.fm account. If you get an error that your account cannot be authorized, register a new free account and try again until it works. I'd love feedback on how it goes for you, whether it succeeds or fails, so that I can get a picture of the extent of the problem. E-mail me at martin@milliesoft.co.uk with your feedback.

I need to have more information about why. The first way to do that is to turn on logging. To do that open up regedit, and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\MillieSoft\Songler for 64 bit systems or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MillieSoft\Songler for 32 bit. Right click and select New->String Value. Create a registry key called logFile with it's value set to a location where it can write a log file, e.g.

Then run the Songler program again, and various diagnostic messages will be written to the log file.

You should also get the full stack trace of the error. To do that depends on what version of windows you have.

In windows vista, open up regedit and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\Extensibility add a DWORD key EnableErrorDetails and set the value to “1”. Windows Media Center will then add a Details button to the Error dialog box with a stack trace of what's wrong. Take a screenshot of that.

In windows 7, no all you need to do is launch Event Viewer and navigate to the Applications and Services Logs > Media Center node to find the full errors.

Send both the log files and the error details to me at martin@milliesoft.co.uk, along with detailed steps of what you did to cause the problem, including details of what artists/songs and so on you choose

Donate

Like the software? Want to help to fund maintenance and development? It does cost to produce this software, both in time and in the cost of buying development tools. All donations are welcome, no matter how small. Just click here to donate securely via PayPal.

Tuner Free MCE Instructions

Prerequisites

You must have Vista Premium or Vista Ultimate, or Windows 7 Premium or Windows 7 Ultimate, and .NET 3.5 or later

To install TunerFree MCE, make sure you uninstall any previous versions first (this will not remove your preferences), and then run the installer file. As part of installation, you will be given the option of having support for US and/or UK programs. This allows you to change the initial settings, but you can always change that later in the preferences screen even if you choose not to install one of the components at this time.

During the intallation process, TunerFreeMCE will build a list of all of the programs currently available. This process takes about 5 minutes, and is then repeated every 12 hours in the background to make sure your program list is up to date.

Using Tuner Free MCE

TunerFree MCE is accessed in Vista Media Center either on the TV bar, or in Program Library under Online Media. In Windows 7, it is under the Extras Library. When you first open it, it will show a list of channels. When you pick a channel, it will display all available programs from that channel. Instead of channels, you can also choose to to pick programs by date, with BBC programs going back 7 days, Channel 4 2 weeks, ITV and Five up to a month, and Hulu about 50 years by the looks of some of the old episodes on there!. You can also search for programs by name, which searches across all of the channels.

BBC TV and Radio

When you click on a BBC program, you will be taken to a page where the BBC flash player is playing the program in a small window. It will quickly jump to full screen. If it does not, navigate to the full screen button at the top left and press it.

When either in full screen or on the mini-player page, pressing Pause will pause playback, and pressing Play will resume it again. Pressing |< will jump back to the start of the program. Pressing >| will toggle between High and Normal resolution (unless you default to always be in high definition). Pressing Stop in Full Screen will exit full screen and stop playback. This is preferred to pressing the clear or Escape key because the system can then keep track of what state it is in.

If when opening a BBC program you get a guidance warning, you can press the 1 key to dismiss it and start playback. If you want to stop the guidance warning, open internet explorer, then go to Internet Settings -> Privacy, and add bbc.co.uk to the list of allowed sites. Then in media center, navigate to a program that requires guidance and confirm that you are over 16 and enter password. The system will then no longer prompt for guidance.

ITV

When you click on an ITV program, you will be taken straight to the video. Because of the way they stream programs, you can use the remote to fast forward, rewind, play and pause. When you click back, you will be taken to a screen where the video is playing in a smaller window, and then you need to click back again to go back to the program list.

Channel 4

When you click on a Channel 4 (including E4 and More 4) program, you will be taken to a page where the Channel 4 flash player is playing the program in a small window. It will quickly jump to full screen. If it does not, navigate to the full screen button at the top left and press it.

When either in full screen or on the mini-player page, pressing Pause will pause playback, and pressing Play will resume it again. Pressing Stop in Full Screen will exit full screen and stop playback.

If when opening a Channel 4 program you get a guidance warning, you can press the 1 key to dismiss it and start playback.

Five

When you click on a Five program, you will get different behaviour depending on which program you pick. Older Five programs behave the same as ITV – they play directly like normal video. With newer programs, FIve have changed to use Flash content, so you will get taken in to the Five website with the program playing, and it will go full screen within 10 seconds.

Hulu

When you click on a Hulu program, you will be taken to the Hulu web page with that program playing. It can take a while for the program to start playing, so when it has, press the Full Screen button to jump to full screen.

When either in full screen or on the mini-player page, pressing Pause will pause playback, and pressing Play will resume it again. Pressing >| will toggle between High and Normal resolution. Pressing Stop in Full Screen will exit full screen and stop playback. This is preferred to pressing the Clear or Escape key because the system can then keep track of what state it is in.

Search

You can search for programs by name in the Search screen. Use your remote to enter the text like you would on a mobile phone, and the list of programs that match will be shown to the right.

There is a particular way of using search that may not be obvious. After searching, you probably want to press the right arrow to go to the list of matches. Unfortunatly media center doesn't allow be to build that, and you need to press OK to navigate from the search text box to the list of results.

Favourites

As you watch programs, TunerFreeMCE will remember what you watch and automatically add it to a Favourites list. You can also manually add programs to favourites by pressing * on the remote, or block items from ever appearing in the favourites by pressing #. You can turn off favourites in the preferences if you prefer.

Twitter

You can set TunerFreeMCE to automatically update your twitter status with the programs that you are watching so that your followers can see what you have been watching. If you turn on twitter integration, you will also have the option of seeing what programs other twitter users are watching too.

You turn on twitter integration by going to Preferences, and clicking on “Set Twitter Username”. This will open a browser window where you can authorize TunerFreeMCE to post to your twitter feed. After authorizing, press “Click after authorization in browser” in the TunerFreeMCE preferences to record the link to twitter. This special browser authorization means that TunerFreeMCE doesn't have to store your twitter username or password, making the system more secure.

Preferences

The preferences screen allows you to turn on and off content from the different channels, as well as changing the cache interval. It also allows you to configure commands for automatic VPN switching so that you can watch programs from both US and UK without having to make any manual changes on your PC. See here for details. It also allows you to change the Click Speed. If you find that TunerFreeMCE sometimes clicks on the play button of the flash player before it has loaded, you may want to change that to Slower (50% increaded delay) or Slowest (100% increased delay). This will give the screen more opportunity to load before clicking.

High Resolution

In the preferences screen, you can choose to default to High Resolution feeds from Hulu and BBC. With BBC streams, it will default to the web page for BBC High Definition feeds, and for Hulu it will attempt to press the High Definition button before going full screen.

1. When I try to watch Channel 4 programs, it doesn’t play the program.

Try to play through internet explorer first, at http://www.channel4.com/watch_online. That may download new DRM software required by Channel 4, and may open new firewall ports required by Windows Media Player. Once the video plays fine through internet explorer, it will play fine through windows media center.

2. When I try to watch BBC programs, it doesn’t play the program.

Try to play through internet explorer first, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer. That may download a new version of Flash. Once the video plays fine through internet explorer, it will play fine through windows media center.

If you are playing the wmv files, you may need a DRM update which you can get by visiting this site in Internet Explorer.

3. When I try to watch ITV programs, it doesn’t play the program.?

Try to play through internet explorer first, at http://www.itv.com/CatchUp. That may download new DRM software required by ITV. Once the video plays fine through internet explorer, it will play fine through windows media center.

4. When I try to watch Five programs, it doesn’t play the program.?

Sometimes Five just displays “Buffering” for a long time. Add “five.tv” to your Sites under Privacy as described in FAQ 20b.

5. How do I play BBC Flash programs in full screen?

Wait 10 seconds, and it will jump in to full screen automatically. If you exit full screen, click on the Full Screen button to go back in to full screen. The same applies to Hulu, Five and Channel 4.

If for some reason the system is clicking in the wrong place and preventing it from auto playing or auto-full screening, send me a full screen screenshot of the issue. You do this by;

1) Press PrtScn2) Open paint and Paste the image in3) Save as a jpeg4) send the jpeg to martin@milliesoft.co.uk

6. How do I exit full screen from BBC Flash programs?

Press the Stop button on your remote. The same applies to Hulu, Five and Channel 4.

7. Why don’t the BBC Flash, Channel 4, Five or Hulu programs play on my extender?

The BBC, Channel 4, Five and Hulu stream their programs using flash. While this is a great cross platform format, it doesn’t work well with extender technology. This is a known issue with extenders that is becoming increasingly frustrating since many popular sites like YouTube use the same technology, and also won’t work well on extenders. The reason is that while there is a dedicated video channel from your PC to your extender, flash cannot play on that channel. It has to play over the regular remote desktop channel, which is sluggish and doesn’t have any sound. Have a look at this article for more details;

For BBC you can select “Play BBC as WMV” in the settings, and then it will then play on the extender.

8. Does this work with 64 bit?

Yes, the software will detect if you have a 64 bit system and set up the links accordingly.

9. What happened to iPlayerMCE?

I renamed it to TunerFreeMCE. Since the code now covers far more than the BBC iPlayer, I thought that this was more appropriate.

10. When the program loads, I get to “Cache Loading” and hangs

The minimum requirements are 2GB of RAM. if you don’t have that, you may see this problem. Secondly, make sure you have .NET 3.5 installed.

Finally, sometimes this happens first time in. Press back and try again.

If none of that works, try the following steps;

Upgrade to the latest versionDelete the file C:\ProgramData\MillieSoft\TunerFreeMCE\programList.dat and C:\ProgramData\MillieSoft\TunerFreeMCE\preferences.datRun C:\Program Files\MillieSoft\TunerFreeMCE\TunerFreeMCECacheBuilder.exe

11. Can I set any options?

Yes, there is a preferences screen in the top right hand corner.

12. How often should the background cache process run?

Out of the box it runs hourly. This enables it to give a fairly accurate stamp of when BBC programs first appeared for searching by date. You could reduce it to daily if you wanted without significant loss of functionality, but any less and the dates would be wrong. You change the frequency in the Scheduled Tasks manager. Not applicable from version 2.0.2 onwards, which automatically runs as a service every 12 hours.

13. I somehow disabled TunerFree MCE and can’t get it back now

If you get an error in TunerFree MCE for whatever reason, MediaCenter will pop up a window saying “An error has occured. Do you want to disable iPlayer”. The default option from this dialog is Disable, and if you pick that, TunerFree MCE will disapear without any obvious way of adding it back, even if you uninstall and reinstall. To get it back, you need to do the following;

In Media Center, go to settings.Pick GeneralPick Program Library OptionsPick Edit Program LibraryCheck the checkbox next to TunerFree MCE

If you do get an error, try deleting your cache from C:\Program Data\MillieSoft\TunerFreeMCE\programList.dat and regenerating by running C:\Program Files\MillieSoft\TunerFreeMCE\TunerFreeMCECacheBuilder.exe. If the error still occurs, let us know at martin@milliesoft.co.uk.

14. Is there an XP Media Center version?

No, there is no XP Media Center version, and there are no plans for one. The reasons are;

1) I don’t have an XP Media Center to build/test on any more. I upgraded everything to vista some time ago

2) I don’t have a version on Visual Studio that can compile .NET 1.1, which is required for XP MCE.

If there is anyone out there who wants to build an XP version, go for it – I can assure you there is plenty of demand. The source code is on sourceforge, so all you really need to do is build an html front end.

I’d also add that while Vista gets a lot of stick, Media Center is one area where it really is a great improvement over XP. Upgrade – you won’t regret it.

15. Flash Video (BBC, Channel 4, Five and Hulu) doesn’t play right full screen

It seems that there is an odd interaction between flash and media center when your desktop resolution is not the same as you media center resolution. The typical example is that you have a 1080p telvision, and so your media center resolution is set to 1920×1080, but your desktop resolution is set to something lower like 1280×720. Flash scales itself for the media center resolution, but plays at the desktop resolution, so a lot of it is off the screen. The solutuion to this is to set your media center resolution to be exactly the same as you desktop resolution. The odd thing is that it isn’t as simple as just changing your media center resolution in the settings – have a look at this post for more info on changing the resolution http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/261297.aspx

This image shows better what is happening;

On the left hand side, we have the desktop running at 1080p and media center running at 720p. The blue area is the part of the screen in which the flash video will NOT be displayed – i.e. the flash video will be constrained to about a quarter of the screen. On the right hand side we see the desktop running at 720p and media center running at 1080p. The blue area is the part of the screen where the flash video is not visible – i.e. the flash video will extend beyond the screen boundaries and only about a quarter of the video will be visible.

16. Why don’t you do Sky Anytime too?

Because;

1) it needs a password, which makes it much harder. 2) it needs silverlight, which is a pain too3) it needs a sky subscription (which I don’t have) or buy programs individually. That makes it costly for me to develop. 4) On Windows 7 there is now a really cool Sky integration that uses interfaces that Microsoft don’t make available to regular developers, so I could never compete with that anyway.

17. What if I can’t install at C:\Program Files\MillieSoft\TunerFreeMCE?

There was an issue in earlier versions that meant that you had to install to the C drive. You can now install to any drive.

18. I get an error when I open the program

If you have just installed, make sure you waited for the program cache to build successfully. If it failed for some reason, do the following;

1) delete C:\Program Data\MillieSoft\TunerFreeMCE\programList.dat2) run C:\Program Files\MillieSoft\TunerFreeMCE\TunerFreeMCECacheBuilder.exe, and make sure you don’t do it with administrator privileges.3) try installing to the C drive if you did not do that before (i.e. ignore FAQ 17 – some people have reported it not working for them)

19. Why doesn’t Hulu or ITV go full screen straight away?

The way full screen for Hulu and ITV works is I simulate a mouse click on the full screen button 30 seconds after I open the page. I wait 30 seconds because it can take a long time to load.

20. I get a guidance warning. What do I do?

On BBC, Channel 4, Five and Hulu, you can sometimes get Guidance warnings that the program you are about to watch is not suitable for minors. There’s two things you can do;

a) On BBC and Channel 4 programs, press the 1 button on the remote, and it will dismiss the message

b) On BBC, Channel 4, Five and Hulu, you can register and log in using the mouse and keyboard to stop further messages. This only works in Media Center if you change your IE privacy preferences to explicitly add each site to the list of Privacy Sites, so add bbc.co.uk, channel4.com, five.tv and hulu.com to the list of sites by going to Tools-> Internet Options -> Privacy -> Sites, entering the site name and press Allow. Then when you register and log in, it will remember you. You may get asked to unblock firewall acces for media center after doing that (ehexthost.exe), which you should allow.

21. Why don’t I see the BBC HD Channel?

BBC have a Sky and Virgin BBC HD channel, and a page for it on iPlayer too. That content is actually duplicated content from other channels like BBC One though, and doesn’t have any unique content of it’s own. Unlike platforms like Sky, TunerFreeMCE can access both HD and SD content for each channel, so rather than artificially grouping content by the resolution, we put it all under it’s original channel, and play the best possible quality available each time. HD content is indicated with an HD logo on the thumbnail. If you don’t want the high definition streams, you can change the preferences to default to standard definition. This uses about half the bandwidth, so can be a good idea for slower network connections.

22. TunerFreeMCE crashes on me when I try to watch programs

1) Make sure you have the following setting set;

2) Make sure that your user has “Full control” for all files in the C:/ProgramData/MillieSoft/TunerFreeMCE;

23. I installed MCE Menu Mender, and now I can’t upgrade TunerFreeMCE

MCE Menu Mender does nasty things to the registry that mean that you can’t uninstall and reinstall TunerFreeMCE (I think it might change the security settings on the registry). The simplest solution is to use Windows Restore to restore back to before you installed MCE Menu Mender. If that’s not an option, the other harder solution is (thanks to Robin Kinross for this one);

1) Uninstall TunerFreeMCE and MCE Menu Mender2) Open regedit and search for the strings “a706600c-c372-4dbb-aecd-0e745f1045df”, “4788AB39-4ACD-4e05-9314-ACFB68F45684” and “C392A5DE-A5A0-463a-AF05-621FE2113AF1”, and delete the registry keys associated with them3) reinstall TunerFreeMCE

24. When I play BBC programs, it says it can’t open the media

You need to update your DRM software to grant you the rights to watch the program. Click on the following link in Internet Explorer to update your DRM software;

If you have problems updating the DRM definitions, go to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\DRM and rename this to DRMbackup. then try the DRM update webpage again.This folder is hidden so you need to change the view options to show protected OS files first.

25. How do I see full error messages?

On Vista, you open up regedit and under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\Extensibility add a DWORD key EnableErrorDetails and set the value to “1”. Windows Media Center will then add a Details button to the Error dialog box with a stack trace of what’s wrong. Take a screenshot of that and post it to the forum

On Windows 7, open up Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer, and then open the folder Applications and Services Logs -> Media Center. All exceptions are logged in there. Cut and paste that and post it to the forum.

26. How do I turn on logging

If you have been asked to turn on logging to help diagnose an issue, do the following;

Edit C:/ProgramData/MillieSoft/TunerFreeMCE/preferences.dat in a text editor and find the entry for logFile. Add a file name, e.g.

I have an iMate Momento photo frame, which only supports glance content. Unfortunatly most of the cooler sideshow gadgets out there require interaction to work well, not just glance content, so I decided to develop my own to meet my own specific needs. Continue reading Sideshow Gadgets→

About Us

My name is Martin Millmore. I write software for windows media center that I personally find useful, and share it with the rest of the world, on the basis that if it is useful for me, someone else might find it useful too.

I write the software for fun, but you can help fund the development either buying a license for one of the applications directly within the product, or by clicking here to make a donation. Note, donations do not buy licenses, so unless you want to contribute a specific amount, I’d recommend buying a license first. .

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